We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Project management apps run the gamut from online systems that are extremely easy to use but don't track every detail of a project, to those that are highly complex but can capture every penny spent and minute worked. Lying somewhere in the middle, Celoxis is the best of both worlds. Noodle around with the app for a few minutes, and you'll have learned enough to get started. Pour a week or so into mastering more advanced aspects, and you can use it to project revenue or adjust project schedules around employee time off. Celoxis seems best suited for medium or large organizations because it offers more than what the typical small business will need. For what it is, the price is more than fair whether you choose to use the cloud version or an on-premise installation. Celoxis doesn't edge out our Editors' Choices for project management apps for small businesses, Zoho Projects and Teamwork Projects, nor our pick for large organizations, LiquidPlanner. It nearly matches LiquidPlanner in prowess, however, and is a great option if LiquidPlanner feels just a little more complex than what you need. Celoxis Pricing and Plans When it comes to choosing a Celoxis plan, you have two options. You can use an online version called the Cloud plan, or you can host the software and all your data yourself with the On-Premise plan. Celoxis doesn't offer a free tier of service, but you can get a time-limited free trial that doesn't require a credit card. You do need a business domain email address, however, as the signup form rejects addresses from Gmail, Outlook.com, and other free providers. The Cloud option costs $25 per person per month, with a minimum of five people. You get a discount if you pay for one or two years upfront. With the Cloud plan, you get 2GB per person in storage space, which is pooled among the team. You can add 10GB of storage for an extra $10 per month. The On-Premise plan costs a flat one-time price of $450 per person, and it's also for a minimum of five people. You still get upgrades to the software with this type of account, and one year of support is included. Prices for project management apps run anywhere from about $4-$9 per person per month for small businesses with limited needs to $30-$45 per person per month for the most advanced software. That puts Celoxis' price within the expected range. The value is high, however, considering what you get with this app. It's also somewhat refreshing to not have to choose from different tiers of service. If you pay for Celoxis, you get everything that it offers, whereas other project management apps offer a range of plans with different limitations. If you prefer a project management app that offers a free account, try Teamwork Projects, Zoho Projects, TeamGantt, ProofHub, or AceProject. Getting Started With Celoxis If you sign up for the 30-day trial of Celoxis, your account comes pre-populated with dummy projects. Having some data already loaded gives you an idea of how the app will look once you start using it. Graphs and charts appear on your dashboard. You see summaries of tasks due, planned revenue versus actual revenue, and other information that wouldn't be available if you started out with a clean slate. Between the dummy data and some video tutorials, it's very easy to explore the app to get a sense of what it can do. View All 7 Photos in Gallery One highlight of the interface is a customizable dashboard. You can choose exactly what you see when you first log into the app, whether a pie chart showing the status of tasks overall (on time, at risk, late, etc.), your own task list, or both. You can add other widgets to the dashboard, too. Getting rid of them is as simple as clicking on an X in its corner. When speed and ease of use are done right in online software, it's easy to overlook them. In other words, getting them right is a thankless job. When apps get it wrong, however, productivity slows down and employees get cranky. Thankfully, Celoxis gets it right. The app works smoothly and is responsive. Pages load quickly. Interactive elements, such as spanner bars on Gantt charts, respond in real time. If you think you can edit a text field or widget by clicking on it, you probably can. The current version of Celoxis has an up-to-date business look about it. There's a new design in beta, which I got to see, and it has more upbeat energy. Rather than sticking to blues and grays, it uses color more liberally. All the fonts and graphical elements got a bit of a facelift. Most importantly, the new design adds a left side menu bar that helps with navigation tremendously. Celoxis Features As a project management app, Celoxis meets all expectations in terms of delivering features you'd expect. Plus it has a few that are typically only found in higher end project management apps designed for large teams. Let's start at the level of a task. Every task can have a name, description, resources/assignees, priority rating, planned and actual start dates and end dates, percent completion, budget, status (in progress, blocked, etc.), and more. You can upload files to a task, add comments, add followers, and track time worked, either by running an in-app timer as you work or manually. Celoxis gives you a custom field where you can write down anything else you want associated with a task as well. Not all project management apps come with financial tools for budgeting, but Celoxis does, and what's included is comprehensive. You can add a budget to any project whether it's billed hourly or on contract for a flat fee. You can also keep track of financials at the task level. Just as with projects, you can classify tasks as billable at a fixed rate or by time and materials. Celoxis doesn't have an invoicing system, but it does have tools that let you mark what has and has not been invoiced. Additionally, you can integrate Celoxis with QuickBooks to compile invoices more accurately and easily. Celoxis has tools for running cost projections based on actual costs and how much progress your team has made toward completing a project. Another helpful tool is that the app lets you see when projects are due to be completed, based on their current schedule, and when you'll be able to bill clients, which helps create more accurate revenue forecasting. Similar to LiquidPlanner, some of the more impressive features in Celoxis have to do with scheduling and automatically adjusting schedules when one deadline slips or changes. Gantt charts in Celoxis are interactive. You can adjust any task by dragging its start or end time in the Gantt chart view. Gantt charts give better visibility to dependencies among tasks as well. You can set up automatic changes to the schedule based on information in the team's calendar, too, such as holidays and employee days off. If automated updates to the schedule don't work well for your team, you can always override them across the whole project with a single checkbox. When it comes to resource management, Celoxis helps managers identify potential problems with resources and resource distribution easily. You can pull up a simple resource management table across all projects to see whether any team member or department has too much on their plate, or if anyone doesn't have enough work scheduled. In this way, managers can keep an eye on workload distribution. It has basic expenses management tools as well. Reports are plentiful in Celoxis. From the Reports dropdown menu alone, you can generate 13 reports, including incomplete timesheets, late tasks, project financials, project status report, project revenue, and so forth. Collaboration and Communication Celoxis has all the most basic communication features you'd expect to see in a project management app. There are spaces for having discussions within tasks. You can put an @ symbol before someone's name to call their attention. Notifications help everyone stay on top of what's occurring. Another area where Celoxis could improve is in the way you collaborate on attached files. You can upload files to a project, task, or milestone, and that's fine. To open a file, however, and comment on it or edit it, you first have to download the file and do that work in another app, then upload the changed version. Some project management apps, such as Mavenlink, give you image and PDF markup tools directly in the app so you can add your comments without ever leaving the app. It makes collaboration much easier if your team does a lot of proofing with visual documents or PDFs. Celoxis' check-out system feels old-fashioned in the days of real-time document collaboration. As to other communication tools, there's no in-app chat box in Celoxis, which some project management apps have—but having one doesn't seem too important given the popularity of team chat apps such as Slack. If you want to integrate Slack and Celoxis, it's possible, but not with a one-touch option. Rather, you have to build it using a web API. Speaking of connectivity, you can integrate Celoxis easily with dozens of tools including Salesforce, Google Drive, JIRA, iCal, Microsoft Excel, Mailchimp, and FreshDesk. Celoxis doesn't have dedicated mobile apps, either, but it does have a mobile-optimized website. An Excellent Option Celoxis is a strong contender among online project management platforms, especially for medium to large organizations. It's easy to set up a free trial to dip your toes in the water, but keep in mind that the trial expires in 30 days, whereas some other apps don't put a time limit on their free accounts. The price is low considering what you get: resource-management tools, rich reports, time-tracking, and more. Celoxis reminds me a lot of LiquidPlanner, our Editors' Choice for project management apps for large organizations, although Celoxis isn't as intimidating. LiquidPlanner is a powerhouse of a tool that you have to set aside time to learn. Celoxis might take just as long to learn, but it feels more approachable, and you can learn by uncovering new features as you try it and eventually master it. If you have more modest needs in a project management app (and a more modest budget), stick with our Editors' Choices for small businesses: Teamwork Projects and Zoho Projects. Bottom Line: For medium or large organizations, project management app Celoxis offers plenty of helpful tools for tracking projects, time spent on task, and financial resources. Celoxis
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We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. Project management apps run the gamut from online systems that are extremely easy to use but don't track every detail of a project, to those that are highly complex but can capture every penny spent and minute worked. Lying somewhere in the middle, Celoxis is the best of both worlds. Noodle around with the app for a few minutes, and you'll have learned enough to get started. Pour a week or so into mastering more advanced aspects, and you can use it to project revenue or adjust project schedules around employee time off. Celoxis seems best suited for medium or large organizations because it offers more than what the typical small business will need. For what it is, the price is more than fair whether you choose to use the cloud version or an on-premise installation. Celoxis doesn't edge out our Editors' Choices for project management apps for small businesses, Zoho Projects and Teamwork Projects, nor our pick for large organizations, LiquidPlanner. It nearly matches LiquidPlanner in prowess, however, and is a great option if LiquidPlanner feels just a little more complex than what you need. Celoxis Pricing and Plans When it comes to choosing a Celoxis plan, you have two options. You can use an online version called the Cloud plan, or you can host the software and all your data yourself with the On-Premise plan. Celoxis doesn't offer a free tier of service, but you can get a time-limited free trial that doesn't require a credit card. You do need a business domain email address, however, as the signup form rejects addresses from Gmail, Outlook.com, and other free providers. The Cloud option costs $25 per person per month, with a minimum of five people. You get a discount if you pay for one or two years upfront. With the Cloud plan, you get 2GB per person in storage space, which is pooled among the team. You can add 10GB of storage for an extra $10 per month. The On-Premise plan costs a flat one-time price of $450 per person, and it's also for a minimum of five people. You still get upgrades to the software with this type of account, and one year of support is included. Prices for project management apps run anywhere from about $4-$9 per person per month for small businesses with limited needs to $30-$45 per person per month for the most advanced software. That puts Celoxis' price within the expected range. The value is high, however, considering what you get with this app. It's also somewhat refreshing to not have to choose from different tiers of service. If you pay for Celoxis, you get everything that it offers, whereas other project management apps offer a range of plans with different limitations. If you prefer a project management app that offers a free account, try Teamwork Projects, Zoho Projects, TeamGantt, ProofHub, or AceProject. Getting Started With Celoxis If you sign up for the 30-day trial of Celoxis, your account comes pre-populated with dummy projects. Having some data already loaded gives you an idea of how the app will look once you start using it. Graphs and charts appear on your dashboard. You see summaries of tasks due, planned revenue versus actual revenue, and other information that wouldn't be available if you started out with a clean slate. Between the dummy data and some video tutorials, it's very easy to explore the app to get a sense of what it can do. View All 7 Photos in Gallery One highlight of the interface is a customizable dashboard. You can choose exactly what you see when you first log into the app, whether a pie chart showing the status of tasks overall (on time, at risk, late, etc.), your own task list, or both. You can add other widgets to the dashboard, too. Getting rid of them is as simple as clicking on an X in its corner. When speed and ease of use are done right in online software, it's easy to overlook them. In other words, getting them right is a thankless job. When apps get it wrong, however, productivity slows down and employees get cranky. Thankfully, Celoxis gets it right. The app works smoothly and is responsive. Pages load quickly. Interactive elements, such as spanner bars on Gantt charts, respond in real time. If you think you can edit a text field or widget by clicking on it, you probably can. The current version of Celoxis has an up-to-date business look about it. There's a new design in beta, which I got to see, and it has more upbeat energy. Rather than sticking to blues and grays, it uses color more liberally. All the fonts and graphical elements got a bit of a facelift. Most importantly, the new design adds a left side menu bar that helps with navigation tremendously. Celoxis Features As a project management app, Celoxis meets all expectations in terms of delivering features you'd expect. Plus it has a few that are typically only found in higher end project management apps designed for large teams. Let's start at the level of a task. Every task can have a name, description, resources/assignees, priority rating, planned and actual start dates and end dates, percent completion, budget, status (in progress, blocked, etc.), and more. You can upload files to a task, add comments, add followers, and track time worked, either by running an in-app timer as you work or manually. Celoxis gives you a custom field where you can write down anything else you want associated with a task as well. Not all project management apps come with financial tools for budgeting, but Celoxis does, and what's included is comprehensive. You can add a budget to any project whether it's billed hourly or on contract for a flat fee. You can also keep track of financials at the task level. Just as with projects, you can classify tasks as billable at a fixed rate or by time and materials. Celoxis doesn't have an invoicing system, but it does have tools that let you mark what has and has not been invoiced. Additionally, you can integrate Celoxis with QuickBooks to compile invoices more accurately and easily. Celoxis has tools for running cost projections based on actual costs and how much progress your team has made toward completing a project. Another helpful tool is that the app lets you see when projects are due to be completed, based on their current schedule, and when you'll be able to bill clients, which helps create more accurate revenue forecasting. Similar to LiquidPlanner, some of the more impressive features in Celoxis have to do with scheduling and automatically adjusting schedules when one deadline slips or changes. Gantt charts in Celoxis are interactive. You can adjust any task by dragging its start or end time in the Gantt chart view. Gantt charts give better visibility to dependencies among tasks as well. You can set up automatic changes to the schedule based on information in the team's calendar, too, such as holidays and employee days off. If automated updates to the schedule don't work well for your team, you can always override them across the whole project with a single checkbox. When it comes to resource management, Celoxis helps managers identify potential problems with resources and resource distribution easily. You can pull up a simple resource management table across all projects to see whether any team member or department has too much on their plate, or if anyone doesn't have enough work scheduled. In this way, managers can keep an eye on workload distribution. It has basic expenses management tools as well. Reports are plentiful in Celoxis. From the Reports dropdown menu alone, you can generate 13 reports, including incomplete timesheets, late tasks, project financials, project status report, project revenue, and so forth. Collaboration and Communication Celoxis has all the most basic communication features you'd expect to see in a project management app. There are spaces for having discussions within tasks. You can put an @ symbol before someone's name to call their attention. Notifications help everyone stay on top of what's occurring. Another area where Celoxis could improve is in the way you collaborate on attached files. You can upload files to a project, task, or milestone, and that's fine. To open a file, however, and comment on it or edit it, you first have to download the file and do that work in another app, then upload the changed version. Some project management apps, such as Mavenlink, give you image and PDF markup tools directly in the app so you can add your comments without ever leaving the app. It makes collaboration much easier if your team does a lot of proofing with visual documents or PDFs. Celoxis' check-out system feels old-fashioned in the days of real-time document collaboration. As to other communication tools, there's no in-app chat box in Celoxis, which some project management apps have—but having one doesn't seem too important given the popularity of team chat apps such as Slack. If you want to integrate Slack and Celoxis, it's possible, but not with a one-touch option. Rather, you have to build it using a web API. Speaking of connectivity, you can integrate Celoxis easily with dozens of tools including Salesforce, Google Drive, JIRA, iCal, Microsoft Excel, Mailchimp, and FreshDesk. Celoxis doesn't have dedicated mobile apps, either, but it does have a mobile-optimized website. An Excellent Option Celoxis is a strong contender among online project management platforms, especially for medium to large organizations. It's easy to set up a free trial to dip your toes in the water, but keep in mind that the trial expires in 30 days, whereas some other apps don't put a time limit on their free accounts. The price is low considering what you get: resource-management tools, rich reports, time-tracking, and more. Celoxis reminds me a lot of LiquidPlanner, our Editors' Choice for project management apps for large organizations, although Celoxis isn't as intimidating. LiquidPlanner is a powerhouse of a tool that you have to set aside time to learn. Celoxis might take just as long to learn, but it feels more approachable, and you can learn by uncovering new features as you try it and eventually master it. If you have more modest needs in a project management app (and a more modest budget), stick with our Editors' Choices for small businesses: Teamwork Projects and Zoho Projects. Bottom Line: For medium or large organizations, project management app Celoxis offers plenty of helpful tools for tracking projects, time spent on task, and financial resources. - Zugriffe: 138